A
Reprint of the Original 1903 Article
AS TO MEAT EATING
by
CHARLES FILLMORE
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HE subject of diet is attracting more attention
every day among metaphysicians. At one time it was only necessary to quote, ''Take
no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,'' to dismiss the whole
matter. But the revised Bible puts an entirely new phase upon this familiar
quotation. It says, "Be not anxious for
your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink.'' It was a treatment
against anxiety as to the provision of God that Jesus was giving, and not an
injunction to take no thought about food.
It is found that food does
have a part in body structure, and that the metaphysician must take it into
account if he would reach the higher substance demonstrations. The argument
that we are putting power where no power exists, in the material, is a
contradiction in itself. We eat to sustain life in the organism, therefore life is the object of eating. Every form
in existence is a manifestation of life, and the life idea that pervades it is
its source. If that life idea is for a moment withdrawn the form collapses.
Hence we do not eat matter, but life.
This puts a new phase upon
eating. If we are daily eating aggregations of life ideas hid within the
material forms, we should use discrimination in choosing those forms. Our food
should be full of life in its purity and vigor. There should be no idea of
death and decay connected with it in any degree. The vegetable should be fresh
and the fruit radiant in its sunny perfection.
I have in years of experiment
tested the effect in mind and body of meat-eating and non-meat-eating,
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and I feel that I am more competent to judge of the
effects than one who theorizes about the question.
Some sixteen years ago {1887}
when I began the study of Truth I was told that it made no difference what I
ate if I was in the right thought. This seemed to prove true up to a certain
point in my experience. While my spiritual development was confined to the
conscious mind there seemed no special need of food discrimination. But gradually
a new phase set in. I found that I was having vibrations in the sympathetic
nerve centres -- the subconscious mind was being quickened, and I was becoming
a conscious vital battery. The vital currents gradually grew stronger and
stronger until I could hardly control them. Appetite, passion, emotion, etc.,
were greatly increased. Then my prayers for guidance were answered and a system
of communication set up with the higher realms of consciousness. I was shown
that the food that entered the organism had to pass through a process of regeneration
every day before it was in condition to be built into the new body in Christ.
Just how to carry on this regenerative process in the various subconscious
centres was also shown, and here is where I discerned the effects of food in
body building.
The vitalizing element in
food is contained in the cell, which may be termed a mind battery vibrating
with intelligence, force and substance. These elements are present in the living cell -- dead cells are those in
which intelligence and force have withdrawn and inanimate substance only remains.
Man appropriates these cells and they become part of his consciousness
according to his capacity to use them. Those who have not developed the capacity
to consciously regenerate the cells get but a small part of their energies.
Sufficient force is extracted through the automatic functions of the organism
to build up and sustain a physical body for a few years, but the thread of life
is frail and its texture coarse. In man the bulk of the cells are deposited in
the
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refined seminal seed, ready for regeneration, but
seldom used to that end – rather dissipated in ignorant sexual indulgence. In
woman the menstrual flow relieves the system of the life elixir, which should
have been regenerated and thrown onto the higher plane of consciousness.
Personal experiment has
proven to me that there is but very little change in the character of the food
until it passes through that refining process called regeneration. The stamp
of individual identity is put upon it only through a concentrated effort of the
I AM, in spiritual mediation and affirmation. It is true that all those people
who are much in prayer and conscious spiritual states are constantly drawing
upon these reserve cells in the seminal ducts and regenerating them. But the
process is not well sustained until man consciously co-operates with the law
and seeks daily regeneration and purification of all the cells in the
organism. Then a system is established and the new body built up as designated
by Jesus Christ in the symbology of the New Testament.
With this understanding
of the process of body building and
body substance, both physically and psychically, we can see the necessity of
discrimination in choosing foods. If the cells pass into the blood and glands
essentially the same as they were formed by the animal or the vegetable from
which they came, it is highly important that their character be of the highest
and purest.
We eat the flesh of the
animal for the life it contains, yet the fact is that life has disappeared in
its highest degree -- there is left only a lot of corpse-cells in various
stages of corruption and decay. These are really a burden to the organism
because of the disintegrating tendency which has already set in. Instead of the
vigor and force of the animal that once animated that flesh there is left a
festering mass of dead cells without a single animating principle. Before
upbuilding life can be put into those cells
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they must pass through earth and the vegetable
kingdom to the animal. Yet ignorant man loads his system with these elements of
discord and decay and expects to get life out of them. No wonder his body dies.
Again, it is proven by
experiment that certain negative states of consciousness peculiar to the animal
accompanies its flesh in all its journeys through the body of man. All the
upbuilding life goes out with the soul of the animal when it gives up its body,
but the fears, the violence, the ignorance, the anger, the lust, and all that
pertains to the error side of consciousness hovers around the dead cells. In
San Francisco a few years ago many people were made violently ill from eating
meat bought at a certain shop. Physicians investigated and they found that the
carcass of a certain steer was the source, and it was presumed that it was
diseased. Further inquiry developed this to be an error -- the animal was
unusually healthy and vigorous -- in fact so vigorous and forceful that he
fought for his life for over an hour after the attempt to kill him began. He
was in a frenzy of terror and anger; his eyes were bloodshot and he frothed at
the mouth while the butchers were trying to slay him. The physicians decided
that the anger and terror of this steer poisoned his meat in manner similar to
that of the angry mother her milk, which is well known makes the infant sick.
This instance was but an
exaggeration of conditions that exist
in a milder form in all animal flesh offered for food in our markets. Before
they are slain the poor brutes are maltreated in ways almost beyond
enumeration. Visit shipping pens, stock-trains, stock-yards and packing houses,
if you want evidence of the sufferings of the poor beasts of the field. And
these very sufferings are through the law of sympathetic mental vibrations
transferred to the flesh of those who eat the bodies of these animals. The
undefined fears, the terrors
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of the nightmare, and the many disturbances in stomach
and bowels that man endures may be in a measure traced to these unsuspected
sources.
The argument that life is
destroyed in eating fruits and vegetables is frequently used to excuse the
slaughter of beings having intelligence, affections, and apparantly souls
almost equal to man’s. It is so far-fetched that a moment's sincere thought
ought to disclose the fallacy to anyone. The fruit, and the vegetable have
completed their life course and have apparently been prepared by a wise creator
for food, as we are told in Genesis 1:29, "Behold! I have given you every
herb yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Here is plainly indicated
a vegetable and fruit diet for man. When these abundant products of nature are
found spread upon her green-garnished tables everywhere, why should man dye
his hands with the life-blood of beings that resent the carnage, and cry out
and bellow in terror when his cruel knife is raised against them? This is
direct opposition to the Divine Law of freedom and right to life liberty and
the pursuit of happiness to all of God's creatures. Man is today suffering in
his body and mind the results of this transgressed law, and he will continue
to suffer until he observes in its fullest degree the command, "Thou shalt
not kill."
We rejoice that progressive
metaphysicians are giving this question experimental
attention. It is so easy to theorize and argue - the ranks are well supplied
with these voluable wise ones, - and it is a real pleasure to find the results
of the test of non-meat eaters in our metaphysical ranks. In a recent issue of The Nautilus, William E. Towne, one of
the editors, has an excellent article on this subject, from which we quote:
“Capt. G. E. Diamond of San
Francisco, is now one hundred and six
years old, and engages in physical culture and cycling exercises. He has
totally abstained from animal flesh foods for over eighty years. He is as
straight as an arrow and richly enjoys life. It is both an illusion and a
delusion to think that one must eat animal flesh ‘to keep up the strength.’
There is more
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nitrogen, more muscle, more
strength in one pound of browned peanuts than in a pound and a half of beef
steak.”
Evidently if the practice of
vegetarianism produces weakness of brain and body it has taken it a long time
to get in its work on Capt. Diamond.
This reminds me of an old
story about a temperance crank who tapped an old gentleman on the shoulder as
he was about to quaff a glass of whiskey and said: “My friend, did you know you
were drinking slow poison?” “Is that so?” was the reply; “it must be very slow
for I’ve been drinking it for sixty years.”
Dr. Peebles is himself almost
eighty-two years old, yet he rises at four o’clock every morning and works from
twelve to fourteen hours of each day. He has abstained from meat eating for
many years and says of himself: “ I eat no animal flesh, use no liquors, nor
wines, no tobacco, no coffee nor tea, I have no aches nor pains, I can bat a
ball, run like a sixteen-year-old lad, swim like a fish, and dance the ‘Highland
Fling.’ At the propressive Lyceum picnic in Melbourne last year, five hundred
witnesses on the ground, I ran a foot race and took the prize.”
Dr. W. R. C. Latson, a
recognized authority upon diet, has this to say about meat in his book on “Food
Values”: “So far from being a ‘strong food,’ flesh meat is, strictly speaking,
not a food but a nutro-stimulant. The meat of the animal contains food and
poisons. The food we can use. The poisons we must excrete, and in the effort to
get rid of these irritating poisons the organism is thrown into a state of
excitation which is mistaken for strength. As a matter of fact it is like the
‘strength’ which come from alcohol.”
Dr. Latson goes on to say
that it is a fact that the heart of the habitual meat eater will beat ten more
per minute at least than the heart of a person living on a pure diet. He says
further: “The strongest argument against the use of flesh meat is that to eat
the animal’s flesh is to eat the animal’s execreta, which is inseparable from
it.”
It is a fact that at least
seventh-tenths of the population of the globe never eat meat. In his book on
“Physical Education” Dr. Felix L. Oswald says: “The strongest men of the three
manliest races of the present world are non-flesh eating.”
In his book on “Food Values”,
Dr. Latson presents various tables and diagrams in relation to the amount of
nourishment contained in every-day foods, and these tables show conclusively
that flesh meat is less rich in food materials than many other common articles
of diet.
It is a fact that “during the
heroic periods of Greek and Roman history the food of the soldiers was entirely
vegetarian. The Greek athletes were trained upon vegetarian diet.”
It is a fact that the most
successful athletes of the day are those who abstain from meat entirely or at
least during their
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periods of training. Bernarr MacFadden, formerly a
successful athlete and now editor of several physical culture magazines, has
this to say regarding meat eating in his book, “Strength From Eating”: “But the most startling evidence in favor of
vegetarianism is the fact proven in my own athletic experience, and in the
experience of many others, that the vegetarian diet gives one far greater
endurance than the meat diet.”
The italics in the preceding
quotation are my own. Further on Mr. MacFadden says, “There is no doubt that a
better quality of blood is made from a vegetarian than from a meat diet.”
In the light of practical
experience, facts, and such as those I have here set down, I think we can
safely agree with Dr. Latson, who in summing up the question of meat eating,
says: “So far from being a ‘strong’ food, flesh meat is a very ‘weak’ food; and
proportionately to its bulk, imparts very little energy.”
In line with the foregoing I
print the following interesting item of news, clipped from The Youth’s Companion: The youth of America discovered long ago
that peanuts are uncommonly filling and four students at Norwich University at
Northfield, Vt., have for several months been putting that discovery to practical
use. A young man working his way through college, who found it needful to pare
expenses, demonstrated that a quart and a half of peanuts provided all the
sustenance he needed for twenty-four hours, and when he bought the nuts by the
sack his “board” costs him just a dollar a week, as against the three dollars
and a half he had been paying at a fraternity house. Soon three other students
joined the experimenter, and since early in March these four have stuck to the
peanut diet, the only variation from the original plan being that on two days
in the week each man eats three eggs “to supply the need of albumen.” The
correspondent who tells the tale adds that three
of the four peanuters are identified with the athletic interests of the student
body, and affirms that physically as well as mentally they are in better
condition than ever before. In the last twelve weeks the men have increased
in weight, on an average, fifteen pounds. Let the lean, the feeble, and the
wise women who run boarding-houses make a note of it.
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EDITORS
NOTE:
The
original typewritten manuscript for this article ended with a final paragraph
from the “Words of Truth”. Since this portion of the article was probably never
published, Unity School of Christianity retains the copyright. Truth students
are referred to the original manuscript at the Unity Archives for the
unpublished portion of this article by Charles Fillmore.
This
article was originally published in the October, 1903 issue of Unity Magazine,
Volume XIX, No. 4. This article is in the public domain and no longer protected
by the copyright laws of the United States of America. Access to the manuscript
and the published article was generously provided by:
Unity
Archives
Unity
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